Do it Best honors best vendors, stores for 2008

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Do it Best recently presented its Vendor of the Year awards, as well as its first-ever Member Excellence awards, the Fort Wayne, Ind., co-op announced.

The Vendor of the Year awards were given to Irwin Industrial Tools, which was selected as the Outstanding Products & Services Vendor of the Year; 3-G’s/PrimeSource, which received the Overall Sales Growth Vendor of the Year Award; and Rust-Oleum, recipient of the Collaborative Forecasting and Replenishment Award. There were also 22 companies recognized as departmental award winners.

“We appreciate the innovation, competitive pricing and service that our vendors provide us,” said Steve Markley, Do it Best vp-merchandising. “Our vendors are critical to the success of our member-owners, and we appreciate their efforts in helping us remain profitable and continue to grow.”

In addition, Do it Best president and CEO Bob Taylor and executive vp and COO Dave Haist presented two members with Member Excellence awards: Imperial Hardware Company, a 100-year-old family run business in Holtville, Calif.; and Indufesa Do it Center, located in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, which changed the face of hardware stores in Honduras by introducing the country’s first do-it-yourself hardware store, the company said.

“It has been a pleasure to work with these exceptional entrepreneurs, and we applaud the successes their businesses are experiencing,” said Taylor. “We look forward to recognizing the outstanding accomplishments of other Do it Best Corp. members in the years to come.”

Do it Best also presented purchasing awards to its top-performing member-owners for fiscal year 2008. The honorees were as follows: